I got to Steves in WV ok thanks to Grigory, my Bulgarian friend from Richmond.
(he does all the leather work on my bikes)

Steve is also doing the C-Ball on a 101, and has lots of parts. he found a decent cylinder, so we honed it, found a piston, I cut down some rings to fit, lapped in some valves & installed new guides. We'll stick it on the bike in the morning, I should be back on the road tomorrow

I read RTWDoug's road reports to remind myself how dependent I am on modern machinery to complete my rides. This notion of wrecking a piston and knowing someone who knows someone with "all the parts you need" is as lost an art in the 21st century as buggy whip making outside Amish country. Great fun to watch, with hat off and all the best wishes in the world.

Guess I missed you in VA and WV already. Man, I need to stay on top of your travels, Doug. You really do it the way it's supposed to be done and hopefully I'll get a chance to get a few miles with you or pick up a meal.

__________________Heavy is good, heavy is reliable...

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.. H Thompson

If I dont get outta here soon, I'm gonna have to change the name of this thread to
dickin around in steve's garage.......

So I got the bike up on the lift at Steves, his sons Justin & Jared also helped

the jug was pretty rough looking inside. there were aluminum buttons holding the piston pin in place. one was about 1/3 gone, the other was totally gone! it had turned into the aluminum coating on the cyl wall & piston

We dug around in Steves parts, & found another 101 cyl, some fins had been repaired, but inside was fine. I cut/gapped some .050 rings to go in it, since they were a little bigger, they will have more tension against the wall.

the piston was a bit stuck on the pin, so I made a puller out of some allthread & a piece of pipe

the pin bushing had become a little loose, so we knurled it & put some locktite on it

after cutting seats & lapping the valves, the new cylinder was ready to go on

steve checks it over

then we bored out my old cylinder, to see if it would be usable

we went from +030 to +060, it didnt clean up perfect, but we both deemed it as a suitable spare

I flushed the bottom end out with kerosene to try to wash out the extra bits.

after flushing it 5 times, it was pretty clean (I ran the drain thru the paper towels to see what came out)

so I installed the new cylinder

and we adjusted the oil flow to be 'extra wet' and I can adjust it down from there. It was definately a 'not enough oil' problem. Odd, because the bike has always been fine. when I redid the motor, I didnt touch any of the settings, and thought that would be ok.

seems I was wrong.....

and then took it outside to start it up.
I kicked it...
whoosh-clunk-woosh-clunk.....

hmmmm

Steve looks at me & starts cussing.

when he pulled the piston out of the box, he thought it was an original. nope, its a hi compression bonneville piston for racing, and its too tall, & hits the head.
it should be level with the cylinder top.... oops!

No biggie, I tell Steve that when we do something like this in Bama, we just say we were doing a 'test fitting'

So, piston replacement, part 2....

you can see the height difference here....

so got it all back together & rode it a little bit, but it wasnt running great. Seems like the intake manifold is leaking, so I sealed it with some silicone, & will let it cure overnight.

While I'm watching silicone harden, I thought I'd wash some clothes.
I'm not used to these new fangled west virginia washing machines, but at least he has a modern electric one!